


Death is a Temporary Affliction

by BlitheFool



Category: Generation X (Comic), MI:13, Marvel 616
Genre: Fix-It, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-17 05:27:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1375474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlitheFool/pseuds/BlitheFool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about lost mutants and mysterious resurrections.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death is a Temporary Affliction

Pete Wisdom had a pounding headache. It was his own fault, really. He should know better than to try to out drink bloody Braddock. But he’d been in a particularly foul mood the night before and getting completely pissed with a few of his mates sounded better than pausing to think about things. She was dating someone new- that cocky ice bloke. Wazzat? Snow-Man or something? He couldn’t keep track of all of Xavier’s skintights. Pete didn’t know him but he hated him on principle. 

He wasn’t even sure why the knowledge bothered him. Perhaps because she’d managed to move on and he’d…well, mostly he worked. And he drank. He had one night stands with women he didn’t give a hang about (and the feeling was undoubtedly mutual). He’d gotten home somehow- though the details were fuzzy. If he had to guess, he was probably flown there. Having woken up actually tucked into bed and not still wearing his tie, _well_ , Brian could be a bit of a mother hen about these things.  
Right. Aspirin then. Pete pulled on some relatively clean clothes and regarded his disheveled reflection in the bathroom mirror. His hair was a bit greasy and he needed a shave, but, what else was new? He brushed his teeth because it tasted as if something died in there. Now the only thing on his mind was a greasy breakfast and some strong coffee. Having cooking skills that were limited to boiling water and pouring brandy he’d have to drag himself outside if he wanted to eat. 

Off to the nearest greasy spoon then. It was Saturday and still quite early if Pete’s watch was to be trusted. He’d line his stomach with something sufficiently artery clogging and then meet up with Faiza at the office. No one who worked for MI-13 ever took a weekend off.  
He was half way through his brisk walk, nose buried in his smartphone, a cigarette hanging from his lips when a voice snapped him out of his reverie. 

‘Spare a light?’

Normally, Pete wouldn’t have stopped, but the flash of grey skin gave him pause. He turned in the direction of the voice. A very haggard young man was sitting on the street corner regarding him. He was clearly a mutant judging by the copious amounts of sagging grey skin, it bunched in the creases of his arms and made his fingers look abnormally long. Filthy black curls hung in his face almost covering the saddest pair of brown eyes Pete could ever remember seeing. He’d obviously been living on the streets for a while now if the layer of filth and the scraggly beard were any indication.  
‘Yeah. Sure, mate’, he stuck his finger under the young man’s cigarette and set it alight. 

He was rewarded small smile of acknowledgement and a weak ‘Thanks’. The kid’s hands shook when he smoked. 

‘Right. Sure thing.’ 

Pete shouldn’t get involved. He just wanted some breakfast and he wanted this bloody Aspirin to stop his head from pounding. But he’d be damned if that kid didn’t look terribly familiar. Pete wasn’t one to forget a face- especially one as unique as this guy was sporting. 

‘Hey, lissen’, he began cautiously, ‘S’probably none of my business but aren’t you one of Xavier’s kids?’

Then there was a light behind those sad brown eyes. 

‘You-you know who I am?’ the kid seemed happy- thrilled even. Pete wasn’t sure what sort of reaction he was expecting, but this wasn’t it. 

‘Well, not _exactly_ ’, Pete studied the boy who suddenly seemed crestfallen ‘ Yer no Brit. How’d you end up in London?’

‘I don’t remember.’ 

‘Come again?’

‘Woke up in the hospital here a couple months ago.’ He paused, running those strangely long fingers through his matted hair. ‘I didn’t have no place to go. So, I’ve been on the streets ever since.’  
‘What’s yer name then?’

The boy looked at him then, obvious misery on his face, ‘ I don’t remember that either.’ 

Bloody wonderful. 

Pete sighed deeply, ‘Alwright. Great.’ He raked a hand across his face. He needed to stop leaving his flat. Clearly the universe was working against him. 

Hopefully Faiza was in the office already. He’d need access to the X-Men’s files. It was too early for this sort of leg work. _And he was so hung over_. Pete typed away on his cellphone while the wretched grey mutant starred off into space.

‘Smile, mate’, Pete snapped a terribly unflattering photo of his bewildered companion and sent it to Faiza with a note that said ‘Find this mutant’.

‘Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m bloody starving. You fancy some breakfast?’ 

• 

The lot at the caff were going to hate him for this, but the poor kid looked like he hadn’t seen a proper meal in a month. He probably should have offered him a shower first, as a public service, but he’d been too damn hungry to care. 

Besides a few curious glances from people Pete told to piss off, their shared breakfast was fine. The grey mutant ended up eating enough food for three people. Not that Pete could blame him, really. Life on the streets of London couldn’t have been easy. 

Pete told him a few things about MI-13 and how he’d been a member of the Excalibur (twice) and how he knew the X-Men. The kid was mostly quiet, eating gratefully and nodding when he felt it was necessary. 

Pete had paid the bill and left a little extra for the trouble. They walked back to his place where he insisted the young man wash up. It was a matter of personal pride. Mutants took care of their own. And besides, he wasn’t about to send this kid back to the states looking like a street urchin. He handed the young man some of his extra clothes (he considered burning the ones he had been wearing), a towel, a razor, and closed the bathroom door behind him. 

His phone went off a moment later.

‘Faiza. What’s the news?’

‘Uh, hi, Pete. Look. That mutant you had me look up? I think I found a match- Angelo Espinosa. Looks like attended the Massachusetts Academy under Emma Frost and Banshee. Member of Generation X. His code name was Skin.’

‘Lovel- wait. Was?’

‘Well, his file says he’s deceased.’

 _‘Rot.’_ Pete rubbed his temples. He was such a bloody prat. Why did he try to help? The sodding X-Men were always trouble and he knew it. First that lousy Cajun thief had tried to steal Excalibur right from under his nose, then that pointy hair little shit had turned London into his personal playground, and now this. This is why he left the superhero shtick to Brian. ‘Okay. Well, he’s currently in my wc.’

_‘Beg pardon?’_

‘He’s a bit _rank_ , but I’m fairly certain he’s alive as I just had breakfast with him. Look, I need teammates, someone who’d know him on sight.’

‘I’ll send you the file.’  
•  
Pete’s clothes didn’t exactly fit him. For one, Pete was taller, so his slacks just dragged on the floor. Secondly, this grey kid, _Angelo_ , was a walking skeleton, so everything looked baggy on him. Still. It was better than the filth he’d been wearing. And now that he’d shaved he looked a bit more presentable. 

Pete had looked over the file Faiza had sent over. Angelo Espinosa had died at age nineteen from suffocation and extreme blood loss due to crucifixion. _Christ_. Notes listed the body was cremated and interred in that bloody mutant pet cemetery Xavier kept in his backyard. But here he was, standing in front of Pete looking, more or less, exactly like his student photo. Pete glanced at his hands which did have two very nasty looking scars on them. They were much more noticeable now that the kid wasn’t completely caked in dirt. 

‘Right, well, why don’t you sit down.’ Pete motioned towards the couch and Angelo sat down obediently. ‘I just got off the phone with my associate. I had her look you up in the X-Men’s little database.’

Angelo looked at him expectantly- like Pete had the solution to all this problems. Meanwhile he didn’t even know where to start. How do you tell someone who’s sitting right in front of you that they’re supposed to be dead? 

Pete handed the boy a few printouts from Faiza’s file. ‘ Does any of this look familiar to you?’

Angelo ran his thumb along the edge of the pages, regarding them thoughtfully. There were several pictures in the mix. He paused at the team photo, smiling young faces, some of them dead now. ‘I-‘, he paused, taking a deep breath, ‘it’s all… _jumbled._ ’

Pete nodded. He wasn’t expecting the kid to have a miraculous recovery. Things rarely worked that way outside of movies.

‘Angelo,’ Pete’s hand ghosted over the puckered scars on either side of the boy’s palm, ‘do you remember where these came from?’

Pete thought the kid might crumble at that. Those doleful brown eyes turned glassy and he cursed himself for asking about that so soon. It seemed memorable- death, that is. But it was probably the worst possible angle he could have taken. 

‘I remember…hanging there. But’, he stopped to wipe at his eyes. ‘…I don’t remember why.’

God, why was he such shit with people? It was a wonder he had any friends at all. 

‘Alwight, well, that’s a start, I guess.’ Redirect, damn it, ‘ How about any of yer teammates? The ones from, er, Generation X ?‘ Terrible name, really. 

Angelo pointed to young Asian girl in a blindingly bright yellow jacket, ‘She looks familiar and…’, he thumbed over the face of a young man wrapped in black bandages. Oh. _That one_. ‘him too. I almost…’ the boy trailed off squeezing his eyes shut with a quiet sob. 

Bloody. Hell. He was really making a mess of things. Pete laid a gentle hand on the young man’s back. ‘S’alright, mate. We’ll get it sorted.’ There. That sounded marginally comforting. Good work, Wisdom. 

May as well give him the rest of the bad news then.

‘Angelo, your teammates seem to be under the impression that you’re… _deceased_ ,’ he held up his hand when he saw the abject horror in the young man’s face, ‘obviously, that’s not the case. But you’ve clearly been through something very traumatic. I’m not gonna pretend to understand any of this but you’ve got to believe when I say I’ve seen some strange things in my day and this, well, this is barely a blip on the radar.’

Angelo shot him a feeble smile at that, ‘Thanks, man…I think.’ 

‘Lissen, kid’, Pete scratched a hand through his hair,’ I’m gonna call the X-Men and see if I can’t get you back home.’ 

He handed Angelo the remainder of the file –leaving out the horrible post mortem photos- Pete was still trying to scrub those from his brain. ‘You don’t have to look at these now if you don’t want to but, well, here they are if you do.’

• 

‘Hi, yeah, this is Peter Wisdom of MI-13. I need to talk to Head Mistress Katherine Pryde. ‘

Some creature gurgled on the other end of the line and after a series of alarming bleeps and bloops he was transferred to hold music. Lovely. Pete paced the length of his bedroom while The Doors ‘Light my Fire’ blared elevator music style in the background. Who the Hell did they have working for this school anyway?

‘Jean Grey School, this is Katherine.’

Pete swallowed. 

‘Hello? Jean Grey School?’

_Say something._

‘Er, hey, Pryde. This is Wisdom.’ 

‘Pete?’ 

‘Yeah…Hi.’

_Wisdom, you great plonker, spit it out._

‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, no. Well. Maybe. Look. I’ve got one of your students here. In my flat. Seems to have been through a bit of shit from what I can tell. I was wondering if you’d mind sending a few of his teammates over to bring him back to the states?’

‘Oh, Lord. Is it Quire?’

‘What? No. Who the Hell is Quire? It’s, look Pryde, your file on the kid says he’s dead. His name is Angelo. Grey skinned bloke? Bit on the wrinkly side?’

 _‘Skin?’_ , she was silent for a moment, ‘Pete, are you sure it’s not some kind of trick? A shape shifter or…?’

‘Pryde, if this is a trick, that mutant deserves a bloody Oscar.’

• 

‘Your mates are coming by tomorrow to get you’

Angelo nodded mutely. He was still holding the files Pete had given him. 

‘Right. So, for the night, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me. ‘ Another nod ‘ The couch is a foldout. S’abit old, but it s’not terrible…’ Pete trailed off. It was fairly obvious that the boy wasn’t listening. He took a seat next to him on the couch.

‘What am I going to do? With the X-Men, I mean?’

‘Er, I don’t rightly know. They’ve still got a school running over there. Once you’ve got your life sorted you could probably teach?’ Pete shrugged. It seemed as good an idea as any.  
‘I don’t know nothin’ about teaching.’ The young man stared glumly down at the carpet.

‘So far as I can tell, that hasn’t stopped rest of the staff.’ Pete rolled his eyes. It earned him chuckle from the boy sitting next to him.

‘Look, Angelo, I don’t know you very well, but you seem like a good bloke. If you ever get tired of the skintight gig, we could always use you at MI-13. ‘ Pete wasn’t entirely certain what they’d do with a grey stretchy kid but, he’d cross that bridge when and if he came to it. ‘But give the X-Men a go, yeah?’

The boy nodded. ‘Ok. Yeah.’

• 

Pete’s alarm went off at 7 and he pawed at it angrily. Why did he set his alarm on a Sunday? Oh. Right. The grey kid. Oh. Right. The X-Men. He needed a shower. It looked as if something was nesting in his hair. And he’d put off shaving so many days in a row he was beginning to grow a beard.

When he finally exited the bedroom he found Angelo still wrapped in a blanket, curled on his couch. In sleep his face resembled a melted candle. Pete hadn’t realized the kid needed to concentrate just to hold his features in place. The file he’d given him was spread out on the living room floor. He must have been pouring over it for half the night. 

Pete needed caffeine. Badly. He was rummaging in the cupboards for some coffee when the young man stirred.

‘Morning, sunshine. I’m making coffee if you’re interested. Assuming I can find some... ‘ he added with a grumble.

The boy peered back at Pete looking utterly bewildered. 

‘You alright?’ Pete ventured. 

‘I…si. Yes. It’s just something felt familiar to me but’ the boy rubbed at his temples and mumbled something to himself in Spanish that Pete didn’t understand then, ’ some coffee would be nice. Gracias.’ 

‘Right then.’ Pete held up the bag of coffee triumphantly. After a cursorily glance in the fridge, he frowned. ‘Hope you don’t mind it black. Creamer’s spouted legs’

• 

The next few hours were mostly quiet. Pete had managed to find an honest to God pair of jeans for the kid to wear. He didn’t remember buying them, let alone wearing them, so he passed them along to Angelo who seemed grateful to get out of those oversized dress slacks. Granted, they still didn’t fit him, but they looked a little more his style. The t-shirt was a little better. It was a simple white affair that Pete wore under his dress shirts. 

When the buzzer rang Angelo seemed nervous. He’d been worrying his hands for half the morning and smoked a half dozen of Pete’s cigarettes. Pete felt for him. He really did. Poor bugger was about to be whisked off to a life he didn’t even remember having. He’d considered pouring him some brandy but it was only 10:30 in the morning and that seemed like a bad idea.

‘That’d be your mates then.’ Pete smiled reassuringly as he rang to bell to let them up. Half a minute later there was a knock at the door.

• 

She looked like the photographs. Or she did mostly, anyway. She was a bit older now but she still had that blindingly bright yellow trench coat and an incredibly sweet smile. Though the baby was new to him- a cooing happy thing that she’d dressed up like some sort of frog. Standing behind her was that dour oik Starsmore who was carrying a ridiculous matching yellow duffle bag which Pete assumed was stuffed with pampers and other baby supplies. He smirked. He couldn’t help it. 

‘Hullo. You must be Jubilee.’ 

She smiled disarmingly and shook his hand ‘ Hi.’ She chirped. 

‘Hullo, Starsmore.’

 **‘Wisdom.’** It’s a hoarse whisper that rattles through his brain. There’s a slight echo to it, like someone talking in an empty stairwell.  


Bloody unnerving. 

‘Right. Well. Come in then.’ 

Angelo is standing when his friends walk in. Pete notices how he’s tugging on the edges of his t-shirt. Nerves. He really should have offered him that drink.  
‘Ange!’, she embraces him immediately, mindful of the baby strapped to her front. ‘Dude, it’s really you!’ 

There’s a ghost of a smile on his face but the hug is cautious. ‘Hi’, he croaks. ‘Jubilee’, he adds as an afterthought. ‘ And…?’ He motions to the baby which burbles in response.  
‘Shogo’, she’s grinning. Her teeth are _pointy_. That’s unexpected. 

The Starsmore kid hangs back, looking like so much black leather wallpaper. Pete can tell he’s uncomfortable even if he is missing half his face. He thumbing something in his pocket that Pete can quite make out.

Angelo turns and looks the other boy up and down. Then he’s smiling like something just clicked into place. _‘ Jono.’_

**‘Hey, mate’** , Jono waves weakly, **‘it took you long enough.’**

Angelo is grinning as he folds the skinny Brit in his arms. Pete hears a muffled ‘you too, Amigo’ in answer to a comment he didn’t catch.  
Jono is patting his pockets, clearly searching for something. After a moment he pulls out a silver crucifix necklace, **‘Thought you might want this back’** , he says it with a shrug but Pete can tell it’s important.

Angelo takes the item reverently, slipping it around his neck, ‘Thanks, man.’

 **‘You wanna shove off then?’** The corners of Jono’s eyes crinkle. Pete’s not sure but the boy might actually be smiling. 

‘Yeah. OK.’ , Angelo turns to Pete, pulling him into a hug. _‘Thank you.’_

‘Er, right. Sure thing. Friends in need and all of that.’, Pete mutters. 

It was nice to feel needed.


End file.
